#BEIJING, August 26. During a recent working visit to China from August 21 to 26, Science and Higher Education Minister Valery Falkov shared Russia’s aspirations for enhanced scientific collaboration, highlighting the potential for a Chinese experimental station at the Siberian Ring Photon Source (SKIF Collective Use Center). Speaking to TASS, Falkov emphasized the mutual benefits of such partnerships, noting that they enrich the scientific capabilities of both nations.

"We recognize and support the keen interest of our Chinese partners in collaborating on Russia’s megascience infrastructure," Falkov stated. "Such cooperation not only advances our scientific objectives but also fosters shared progress. We anticipate that a Chinese experimental station could be integrated into the SKIF Collective Use Center, which is currently under construction in Koltsovo. Additionally, we have extended invitations for our partners to participate in the International Center for Neutron Research, based on the PIK high-flux reactor in the Leningrad Region, as well as in initiatives to develop a network of modern synchrotron radiation sources, overseen by the Kurchatov Institute National Research Center."

Falkov underscored the importance of expanding China’s role in building international scientific information repositories. "In today’s landscape of scientific discovery, the volume and integration of data directly influence our ability to make new breakthroughs. Enhancing China’s participation in these data-sharing efforts is therefore highly promising."

He also stressed the necessity of coordinated international efforts in big science projects. "Large-scale collaborations are vital for advancing global scientific frontiers. During our visit, we toured several Chinese megascience facilities, including the EAST tokamak. The dedication of Chinese partners to developing cutting-edge scientific technologies, especially in controlled thermonuclear fusion, is truly commendable. The Chinese fusion program received a significant boost when the Kurchatov Institute transferred the Tokamak T-7 facility to China. Today, China stands at the forefront of this field, and I am confident that continued joint efforts will benefit not only our nations but humanity as a whole."

Recalling recent developments, Falkov highlighted a quadripartite protocol signed in May 2023 between Russian and Chinese authorities, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. "This agreement outlines priority areas such as joint experiments in heavy ion physics, neutron research, and theoretical physics, alongside work on medical accelerators within the BESIII and JUNO projects, as well as research utilizing the NICA collider in Dubna. Importantly, these agreements are already yielding tangible results - eight scientific projects have been selected and are underway.".

#SpaceX’s Starship megarocket launches on latest test flight

SpaceX postpones Starship test flight over ground system issue.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Sunday called off the launch of Starship’s tenth mission from Texas over an issue at its launch site, delaying an attempt to achieve several long-sought development milestones missed due to past tests ending in early failures.

The 232-foot(70.7-metre)-tall Super Heavy booster and its 171-foot(52-metre)-tall Starship upper half sat stacked on a launch mount at SpaceX’s Starbase rocket facilities as it was being filled with propellant ahead of a liftoff time of 7:35 p.m. ET (2335 GMT).

But roughly 30 minutes from liftoff, SpaceX said on X it was “standing down from today’s tenth flight of Starship to allow time to troubleshoot an issue with ground systems.”

Musk had been poised to provide an update on Starship’s development progress prior to the rocket’s launch on Sunday, but a placeholder live stream indicated it had been canceled.

SpaceX did not say when it would make another launch attempt. Similar scrubs in the past have been resolved in a matter of days.

Development of SpaceX’s next-generation rocket, the center of the company’s powerful launch business future and Musk’s Mars ambitions, has faced repeated hiccups this year as NASA hopes to use the rocket as soon as 2027 for its first crewed moon landing since the Apollo program.

This year, two Starship testing failures early in flight, another failure in space on its ninth flight, and a massive test stand explosion in June that sent debris flying into nearby Mexican territory have tested SpaceX’s test-to-failure development approach. Still, the company has continued to swiftly produce new Starships for test flights at its sprawling Starbase production facilities.

Those setbacks underscore the technical complexities of Starship’s latest iteration, packed with far more capabilities such as increased thrust, a potentially more resilient heat shield and stronger steering flaps crucial to nailing its atmospheric reentry - key traits for Starship’s rapid reusability that Musk has long pushed for.

The stacked system had been expected to blast off from Texas around sunset on Sunday before its Starship upper stage separated from the Super Heavy booster dozens of miles in altitude. Super Heavy, which has returned for a landing at its launch pad in giant mechanical arms in past tests, would have instead targeted the Gulf of Mexico for a soft water landing in order to test a backup engine configuration.

Starship was to briefly ignite its own engines to blast further into space, where it would have attempted to release its first batch of mock Starlink satellites and reignite an engine while on a suborbital path around the planet.

After that phase, the ship targets an atmospheric reentry over the Indian Ocean, a crucial flight phase that tests a variety of prototypical heat shield tiles and engine flaps designed to endure a barrage of blazing heat that has largely shredded the rocket’s exterior during past flights.

“Starship’s reentry profile is designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the upper stage’s rear flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure,” SpaceX said on its website.

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Richard Chang, Diane Craft and Sandra Maler)

An ‘existential gamble’: Why some experts are worried as SpaceX gears up for next Starship test.

The most powerful rocket system ever constructed is headed for its next test — using a version of the vehicle that has been at the center of a series of explosive missteps and failures.

SpaceX said it is aiming to launch its Starship megarocket on an hour-long test flight as soon as 7:30 p.m. ET Sunday, though the liftoff time is subject to change. A webcast of the event is expected to begin about 30 minutes earlier, according to the company.

The uncrewed Starship prototype will follow a similar flight plan to the last three missions and aim to complete test objectives left untried during those tests, all of which ended prematurely. SpaceX debuted the current generation of Starship vehicles in January, following a clean run of test missions with a slightly scaled-down version of the rocket in 2024.

But since that debut, the vehicle has twice exploded over populated islands east of Florida, creating debris that hit roadways in Turks and Caicos and washed up onto the shores of Bahamian islands. The spacecraft also spun out of control as it headed toward its landing site in the Indian Ocean on its last test flight in May.

Then, in June, a Starship spacecraft that had been strapped to an engine testing stand at the company’s launch and development facilities in South Texas abruptly exploded — spewing shrapnel and causing damage to SpaceX infrastructure.

These setbacks roused long-standing SpaceX critics and attracted new ones, including the Mexican government, which has threatened legal action against the company over reported debris on and around its shores. The UK government also said in a statement Thursday that it’s been “working closely with U.S. Government partners to protect the safety” of its overseas territories, including Turks and Caicos.

The string of mishaps this year has also raised concerns among spaceflight experts and stakeholders who have emphasized that the United States has a lot riding on Starship’s eventual success, including its plans to return humans to the moon as soon as 2027.

And that success is not guaranteed.

“It’s very, very difficult to predict how this is going to end up,” said Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut and SpaceX consultant who is a professor of astronautical engineering at the University of Southern California.

“I think it could end up never working, or it could end up revolutionizing our entire future of activities in space — and geopolitics,” he added, referring to the U.S. goal of displaying technical superiority to China in a new space race.
Why SpaceX is allowed to fly again

SpaceX said it implemented changes to the Starship system slated to fly this weekend in response to the last in-flight failure in May.

Those alterations include adjustments to a component called a fuel diffuser, which the company believes malfunctioned during the last flight, causing higher-than-expected pressure to build up in Starship’s nose cone. It is likely what caused the vehicle to spiral out of control, according to a technical overview SpaceX published last week.

Despite the series of recent problems, the Federal Aviation Administration — which licenses commercial rocket launches — said last week it had closed its investigation into SpaceX’s latest mishap and approved the company’s plans to fly Sunday’s mission.

Under current laws and regulations, the FAA is tasked solely with ensuring that commercial rocket companies do not pose a risk to public property or bystanders’ safety.

“There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property. The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation,” the agency said in an August 15 statement. “SpaceX identified corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the event.”

A long road ahead

In its update, SpaceX also made clear that the version of Starship that has experienced so many issues will soon be retired.

“Two flights remain with the current generation, each with test objectives designed to expand the envelope on vehicle capabilities,” according to a company blog post.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has already been teasing plans for larger, more ambitious iterations of the vehicle that would stretch even taller and carry more propellant.

Now it appears clear that SpaceX will pursue that scaled-up version of Starship — which is already more than twice as powerful as the NASA rockets that powered the Apollo moon landings — whether or not the current line of Starship prototypes ever pulls off a successful test flight.

“It’s very possible that a bigger upgrade might solve the current problem,” Reisman said. “It also could introduce new problems — you never know.”

Notably, the U.S. government has taken several steps that could aide SpaceX in its efforts to expedite Starship testing.

In May, the FAA approved the company’s plans to launch Starship as many as 25 times per year from Texas, up from the five it had been previously authorized to conduct.

And earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump — despite a public and vitriolic falling out with Musk in June — issued an executive order that appears designed to scale back roadblocks and regulatory oversight for private-sector rocket operations, including environmental reviews.

Meanwhile, the stakes appear to be growing with each Starship test flight, as SpaceX is racing against the clock.

Not only does Musk want to send one of the vehicles on an uncrewed flight to Mars when the next opportunity arises in 2026, but NASA also plans to send its astronauts to the lunar surface aboard one of the vehicles as soon as mid-2027 as part of a $2.9 billion contract.

“We made this bet” on Starship, said Janet Petro, who served as acting NASA administrator until July. “They have had a rough year, but SpaceX is a pretty intense and motivated company.”

Petro added she had “full confidence” that SpaceX will refine Starship’s design and get the vehicle working.

Reisman, the former SpaceX adviser, said he is also hopeful but less certain.

“SpaceX has made an existential gamble on Starship,” Reisman said, adding that he is concerned about the rate of progress SpaceX has been making with Starship. “They’re pouring a tremendous amount of money and resources into its development … but at some point, the laws of financial physics still apply.”
What SpaceX hopes to achieve with Flight 10

If all goes according to plan with Starship’s next flight, referred to as Flight 10, the 400-foot-tall Starship launch system will take off from SpaceX’s facilities in South Texas and soar out over the waters off the coast.

The bottom portion of the rocket system that gives the initial burst of power at liftoff, called Super Heavy, will attempt to make a controlled splashdown off the Texas coast, according to SpaceX.

For this mission, the company will not attempt to repeat its dramatic Super Heavy “chopsticks” landing in which the rocket booster steers itself back into the arms of the tower from which it launched. SpaceX said it will instead put the booster through a series of tests designed to push the vehicle to its limits “to gather real-world performance data” that could mimic a future mission that does not go as planned.

Meanwhile, the upper Starship spacecraft, which is designed to one day carry cargo or convoys of astronauts but will haul only dummy satellites for this mission, will continue flying through space.

During the flight, Starship will attempt to deploy the eight satellite “simulators” as well as relight one of the spacecraft’s rocket engines in space. SpaceX has failed to hit both of those milestones in its last three test missions.

Even if this V2 Starship prototype meets a similarly ill fate, SpaceX is likely once again to frame the test flight as a success.

The company employs an engineering philosophy called “rapid iterative development,” which emphasizes a pursuit of launching relatively cheap prototypes on frequent test missions over extensive ground testing or other less risky simulations.

Because of its unique development approach, SpaceX has been known to embrace fiery mishaps. The company has said that even failed test flights help engineers improve Starship’s design — quicker than if SpaceX employed alternative engineering approaches.

“Every lesson learned, through both flight and ground testing, continues to feed directly into designs for the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy,” SpaceX’s August 15 statement reads. “Two flights remain with the current generation, each with test objectives designed to expand the envelope on vehicle capabilities as we iterate towards fully and rapidly reusable, reliable rockets.”

SpaceX’s development approach, while often seen as risky and brazen, has served the company well in the past.

Rarely has one of the company’s rockets malfunctioned once it leaves the development stage and becomes operational. The company’s human spaceflight track record, using Falcon 9 rockets, has been spotless.

And if Starship does eventually work, Reisman said, it won’t only be SpaceX — or even NASA — that benefits.

“The entire space industry is hoping and betting on Starship working, because if it achieves its promise, it’ll also be a revolution in affordability,” Reisman said. “I think there’s causes for optimism and pessimism — and I think it’s very, very difficult to predict how this is going to end up.”

By Jackie Wattles, CNN

#Hurricane Erin downgraded to Category 3 as tropical storm warning issued for Turks and Caicos.

Hurricane Erin weakened to a Category 3 hurricane Sunday as its outer bands continued to lash the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with heavy rains and tropical-storm force winds.

While Erin’s maximum winds diminished, the storm’s overall size grew and forecasters issued tropical storm warnings for the Turks and Caicos Islands and a watch for the southeast Bahamas.

The storm wasn’t expected to directly impact the U.S. East Coast, but by doubling or tripling in size it could bring rip currents all along the Southeast coast. Gusty winds and flooding tides could wash out parts of the highway that connects the North Carolina Outer Banks by midweek, the National Weather Service said.

Bermuda could have similar conditions as Erin is forecast to turn to the north and then northeast, forecasters said.

Erin, the first Atlantic hurricane of 2025, reached Category 5 status Saturday with maximum winds of 160 mph (260 km/h) before weakening.

The storm’s maximum sustained winds were 125 mph (205 km/h) late Sunday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The winds decreased as the storm went through internal changes. Erin is expected to remain powerful for the next several days, forecasters said.

PARK CITY, Utah — SpaceX will perform its next Starship/Super Heavy test flight Aug. 24 after completing an investigation into the failure of the previous mission and getting approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.

#MOSCOW, August 15. An asteroid known as 2025 PM with a diameter of about 50 meters will pass Earth on August 17 at a distance approximately equivalent to the distance between our planet and the Moon, the laboratory of solar astronomy of the Space Research Institute (IKI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences told TASS.

"On August 17, asteroid 2025 PM will pass by at a distance of approximately one diameter of the lunar orbit from Earth. This is one of the closest approaches of an object of such a size in recent time so it has been included in the potentially hazardous list," the laboratory said.

2025 PM is one of the largest asteroids recently getting closer than one million kilometers near Earth. The passage of a larger object at a comparable distance is expected only once this year, at the end of September.

The asteroid was detected on August 1. It does not display any cometary properties, and, according to preliminary data, is a stone rock without any traces of volatile substances. It is an Apollo-categorized asteroid from a group of near-Earth asteroids with their orbits intersecting Earth’s orbit from the outside. 2025 PM’s orbital period is slightly over two years.

The asteroid will come the closest to Earth on August 17 at 12:03 p.m. Moscow time (9:03 a.m. GMT). According to calculations, despite being within Earth’s gravitational pull, the probability of its "capture" is very low and may occur only in the event of an unforeseen collision with another celestial body.

The laboratory reiterated that the most well-known fall to Earth of a meteorite of a comparable size occurred about 50,000 years ago, creating the Barringer Crater in Arizona in the US.

Could the U.S. actually build a nuclear reactor on the moon? Here’s what an expert says:

As #NASA eyes a return to the moon, the agency has set an ambitious goal: deploy a nuclear reactor on the lunar surface by 2030 to provide consistent energy for future missions.

But how feasible is this idea?

According to Lionel Wilson, professor emeritus of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Lancaster University, powering a moon base is one of the most significant challenges facing long-term lunar exploration.

“The moon has no atmosphere, no wind and no renewable resources like coal or forests,” Wilson told CTV’s Your Morning Thursday. “So solar power is the obvious (source).”

Wilson explained that the moon rotates slowly - taking 28 days to complete one rotation - experiencing 14 days of sunlight followed by 14 days of darkness. He says that means bases would need extensive battery systems to store power or a reliable alternative.

According to Wilson, a system that provides constant power, like a radioisotope generator, helps reduce reliance on solar energy. It keeps producing electricity around the clock, so even if a solar setup fails, there’s a reliable backup.

Acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy has directed the agency to fast track plans to put a nuclear reactor on the moon, a moved aimed at staying ahead of China and Russia, which have jointly announced efforts to build a similar system by the mid-2030s.

NASA has previously collaborated with the U.S. Department of Energy on fission surface power projects, which were capable of delivering 40 kilowatts - enough to power 30 homes for 10 years.

The type of system NASA has used in deep-space probes, where solar power is too weak, relies on small amounts of plutonium, Wilson said. But for the 100 kilowatts of power NASA hopes to generate on the moon, Wilson estimates much more would be needed.

“About 200 kilograms of plutonium - that’s roughly a fifth of a ton,” he said. “That’s what it would take using the same design currently powering spacecraft.”

Still Wilson believes producing such a reactor in time is technically possible. The bigger question is whether humans will be back on the moon by then. There’s no point in getting the power source to the moon if you’re not getting the people there,” he said.

#Apollo 13 moon mission leader James Lovell dies at 97.

Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement on Friday.

“Jim’s character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount,” NASA said. “We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements.”

One of NASA’s most traveled astronauts in the agency’s first decade, Lovell flew four times -- Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 -- with the two Apollo flights riveting the folks back on Earth.

In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew of Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders was the first to leave Earth’s orbit and the first to fly to and circle the moon. They could not land, but they put the U.S. ahead of the Soviets in the space race. Letter writers told the crew that their stunning pale blue dot photo of Earth from the moon, a world first, and the crew’s Christmas Eve reading from Genesis saved America from a tumultuous 1968.
The Apollo 13 mission had a lifelong impact on Lovell

But the big rescue mission was still to come. That was during the harrowing Apollo 13 flight in April 1970. Lovell was supposed to be the fifth man to walk on the moon. But Apollo 13’s service module, carrying Lovell and two others, experienced a sudden oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon. The astronauts barely survived, spending four cold and clammy days in the cramped lunar module as a lifeboat.

“The thing that I want most people to remember is (that) in some sense it was very much of a success,” Lovell said during a 1994 interview. “Not that we accomplished anything, but a success in that we demonstrated the capability of (NASA) personnel.”

A retired Navy captain known for his calm demeanor, Lovell told a NASA historian that his brush with death did affect him.

“I don’t worry about crises any longer,” he said in 1999. Whenever he has a problem, “I say, `I could have been gone back in 1970. I’m still here. I’m still breathing.’ So, I don’t worry about crises.”

And the mission’s retelling in the popular 1995 movie “Apollo 13” brought Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert renewed fame -- thanks in part to Lovell’s movie persona reporting “Houston, we have a problem,” a phrase he didn’t exactly utter.

Lovell had ice water in his veins like other astronauts, but he didn’t display the swagger some had, just quiet confidence, said Smithsonian Institution historian Roger Launius. He called Lovell “a very personable, very down-to-earth type of person, who says ‘This is what I do. Yes, there’s risk involved. I measure risk.”’
Lovell spent a total of nearly 30 days in space

In all, Lovell flew four space missions -- and until the Skylab flights of the mid-1970s, he held the world record for the longest time in space with 715 hours, 4 minutes and 57 seconds.

Aboard Apollo 8, Lovell described the oceans and land masses of Earth. “What I keep imagining, is if I am some lonely traveler from another planet, what I would think about the Earth at this altitude, whether I think it would be inhabited or not,” he remarked.

That mission may be as important as the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, a flight made possible by Apollo 8, Launius said.

“I think in the history of space flight, I would say that Jim was one of the pillars of the early space flight program,” Gene Kranz, NASA’s legendary flight director, once said.
Lovell was immortalized by Tom Hanks’ portrayal

But if historians consider Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 the most significant of the Apollo missions, it was during Lovell’s last mission -- immortalized by the popular film starring Tom Hanks as Lovell -- that he came to embody for the public the image of the cool, decisive astronaut.

The Apollo 13 crew of Lovell, Haise and Swigert was on the way to the moon in April 1970, when an oxygen tank from the spaceship exploded 200,000 miles from Earth.

That, Lovell recalled, was “the most frightening moment in this whole thing.” Then oxygen began escaping and “we didn’t have solutions to get home.”

“We knew we were in deep, deep trouble,” he told NASA’s historian.

Four-fifths of the way to the moon, NASA scrapped the mission. Suddenly, their only goal was to survive.

Lovell’s “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” a variation of a comment Swigert had radioed moments before, became famous. In Hanks’ version, it became “Houston, we have a problem.”

What unfolded over the next four days captured the imagination of the nation and the world, which until then had largely been indifferent about what seemed a routine mission.

With Lovell commanding the spacecraft, Kranz led hundreds of flight controllers and engineers in a furious rescue plan.

The plan involved the astronauts moving from the service module, which was hemorrhaging oxygen, into the cramped, dark and frigid lunar lander while they rationed their dwindling oxygen, water and electricity. Using the lunar module as a lifeboat, they swung around the moon, aimed for Earth and raced home.

By coolly solving the problems under the most intense pressure imaginable, the astronauts and the crew on the ground became heroes. In the process of turning what seemed routine into a life-and-death struggle, the entire flight team had created one of NASA’s finest moments that ranks with Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s walks on the moon nine months earlier.

“They demonstrated to the world they could handle truly horrific problems and bring them back alive,” said Launius.

The loss of the opportunity to walk on the moon “is my one regret,” Lovell said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press for a story on the 25th anniversary of the mission.

U.S. President Bill Clinton agreed when he awarded Lovell the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1995. “While you may have lost the moon ... you gained something that is far more important perhaps: the abiding respect and gratitude of the American people,” he said.

Lovell once said that while he was disappointed he never walked on the moon, “The mission itself and the fact that we triumphed over certain catastrophe does give me a deep sense of satisfaction.”

And Lovell clearly understood why this failed mission afforded him far more fame than had Apollo 13 accomplished its goal.

“Going to the moon, if everything works right, it’s like following a cookbook. It’s not that big a deal,” he told the AP in 2004. “If something goes wrong, that’s what separates the men from the boys.”

James A. Lovell was born March 25, 1928, in Cleveland. He attended the University of Wisconsin before transferring to the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland. On the day he graduated in 1952, he and his wife, Marilyn, were married.

A test pilot at the Navy Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, Lovell was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1962.

Lovell retired from the Navy and from the space program in 1973, and went into private business. In 1994, he and Jeff Kluger wrote “Lost Moon,” the story of the Apollo 13 mission and the basis for the film “Apollo 13.” In one of the final scenes, Lovell appeared as a Navy captain, the rank he actually had.

He and his family ran a now-closed restaurant in suburban Chicago, Lovell’s of Lake Forest.

His wife, Marilynn, died in 2023. Survivors include four children.

Don Babwin, The Associated Press

AP Science Writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

#NASA Crew-10 astronauts depart space station after five-month mission